LIGHTS, CAMERA, PROPAGANDA

How right-wing provocateurs like Candace Owens weaponizing documentary filmmaking

- EAMON WHALEN

LAST OCTOBER, Kanye West appeared on the popular podcast Drink Champs, a free-flowing interview show hosted by the rapper N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN-think The Joe Rogan Experience for rappers.

In the interview, Ye said he'd been "screwed by the Jewish media." That "Jewish Zionists" were responsible for crude tabloid stories about the mother of his children, Kim Kardashian. That Planned Parenthood was the Holocaust for Black America. And it was on Drink Champs that Ye proclaimed George Floyd's cause of death an overdose. "They hit him with the fentanyl," he said. "If you look, the guy's knee wasn't even on his neck like that."

If you paid attention to the 2021 trial of "the guy," former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, you might recognize this argument as nearly identical to the defense proffered by Chauvin's attorneys. But West cited another source: a documentary by the right-wing media provocateur Candace Owens, titled The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM.

Owens played a Rasputin-like role in Ye's latest meltdown. Their friendship goes as far back as 2018, when Kanye first donned a MAGA hat and said slavery was "a choice." Before the Drink Champs episode, he appeared with Owens at Paris Fashion Week wearing shirts he designed that read "White Lives Matter." West also was prepared to buy Parler, the fledgling rightwing social media platform headed by Owens' husband, though the deal reportedly fell through.